Lead With Russ

This week I found out I was hacked twice. In one case, an account was accessed and they tried to access my full personal account. In another case, someone got into a blog I had written and inserted a “click-for-pay” link into one of my articles, which was actually pretty clever. I addressed each of these issues.

When you’re hacked, there some simple things that need to be done:

1) Change Your Password: Choose something different, something challenging, and change it often. Don’t use the same passwords for multiple accounts, and don’t use things that people can find out about you online.

2) Be More Cautious: Pay attention to SPAM messages, click throughs, and things that are sent to you that might give people access to your personal information.

There are other things you can do to protect yourself, but beyond staying out of the “cloud”, these are the simplest things to do to avoid being hacked.

In the midst of my frustration this week with these 2 hacks, I was reminded about how I’m “hacked” in my life everyday.

The definition of “HACK” is this:

Hack /hak/

“use a computer to gain unauthorized access to data in a system.”

“cut with rough or heavy blows”

“manage; cope”

While this week I was focused on being hacked through the “unauthorized access to my data”, I was hacked other ways with “heavy blows” that kept me from being able to “manage;cope". Here are some examples:

On Thursday, I got an infection in one of my eyes. This kept me from sleeping, caused me to spend time at urgent care, and just made me uncomfortable for a few days which really affected my work.

My wife had a back issue. This required attention, this caused us to change some plans, and affected part of my schedule.

I had 2 people contact me that needed help with a leadership issue. While this wasn’t a negative thing, their urgency became my urgency, which caused me to not get some of the things completed that I was hoping too.

I had a scheduled call with a leader, and I planned the call for 1 hour, and it went 2 hours. It was a good call, but it carved into time that I had allocated for something else.

I could go on and on, but the reality is that we are “hacked” every day in many different ways.

Plans are changed, our ideas and goals are derailed, we’re forced to respond to a crisis or emergency, or we just get distracted.

This is life. This is leadership.

I realized this week that when I was hacked electronically, I immediately responded to address the issues and try to avoid that happening again.

When I was hacked this week in other ways, I didn’t correct, respond or adjust. I just kept plowing through.

Here are some things that might help you in dealing with the DAILY HACKS that come to us all:

Plan some MARGIN in your schedule. Realize that these interruptions and emergencies will always come. Don’t be so packed full that you can’t respond to anything.

Figure out your priorities. When there’s a crisis in our family, we should respond, adjust and address that quickly. But, we need to determine if other people’s emergencies become ours. They way we determine this is by clarifying and communicating our priorities. This week, I should have said to one of the people that contacted me that I couldn’t respond right now because of some things going on in my life. Instead, I took the call.

When you’ve been hacked, or when you feel like you’ve been dealt a “hard blow”, take some time to recover. Instead of just pushing on, take a deep breath and your perspective will change. You’ll be recharged and able to address and respond to things that come at you on a daily basis. Example: This weekend, in response to a crazy week, my wife and I went and sat at the beach for 3 hours. We took a deep breath, we were encouraged and we were filled up. It’s amazing how something as simple as that can be a complete reset.

The reality is that YOU’RE GOING TO BE HACKED. How you respond to this makes all the difference.